Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Numbers and adding and learning – Oh my!

I have been busy making sure the children are where they are “supposed” to be for their ages and grade equivalent. It is a request made by my husband. So off I went to find a book that shows what the children will be tested on during the 3rd grade standard tests – lucky for me they have it for 2nd too! As I began going through it I wasn’t sure I covered a bunch of what was in there…ut oh I thought. I don’t want to let my husband down and certainly don’t want our children falling behind. Then I realized after a moment of panic that they are right on schedule. We homeschool for a reason. Not to keep up with the jones but to ensure they get the best of learning right here in our home! The best has very little to do with worldly standards.

And yet, I know they have to be tested every few years and to reconcile that I am choosing to work on a few areas of what they will need to know a month. This month I’m choosing to focus on math. Little do the children know of my plan – because they are having a blast with all the numbers, adding and learning! So don’t spoil it – OK!?

What I love about homeschooling is I can teach all of my kids the same things and just let them learn at their own pace! It is great. One lesson plan and we all work together! They love it and so do I!

We are working on learning the place value for numbers! God was with me today giving me fun ways to explain something that I think can be hard to grasp the first few times hearing it.

I broke it down on the board – beginning with the ones place and moving up from there. I had them count with me as I wrote the number on the board. As we moved from ones to tens they saw how the place value grew.

Then I broke it down again – by writing numbers on the board – putting the place value and what that number represents.

Then we worked on writing out the word for each number. They loved doing this!

Then we worked on putting numbers into the right place value section. This was fun for them too! I gave them each a piece of graph paper to help them keep the place values properly lined up. We do this when adding, subtracting or multiplying.

If you look closely – not really too close – you will see that even with graph paper our son still can’t stay in the lines on graph paper…which is still OK for his age. They will all get it one day! Until then I remind myself of grace!!! Our one daughter is very neat and the other not so much. Using graph paper really brings out the personality of your children!

i know you all like music....maybe you will like this. i just downloaded this song for my first grader about place value from this album: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/math/id278053811 it is cute. :)

Wonderful post!! I loved seeing the fun ways you are teaching the children! Plus it was great to see into the 'classroom' a little bit - any chance you would show us how the entire room looks? Do you do the homeschooling in a particular room of the house?